Albert Brooks received an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor for 1987's Broadcast News and was widely praised for his performance as a ruthless Jewish mobster in the 2011 action drama film Drive.
28 Facts About Albert Brooks
2.
Albert Brooks has written, directed, and starred in several comedy films, such as Modern Romance, Lost in America, and Defending Your Life.
3.
Albert Brooks is the author of 2030: The Real Story of What Happens to America.
4.
Albert Brooks's voice acting credits include Marlin in Finding Nemo and Finding Dory, Tiberius in The Secret Life of Pets, and several one-time characters in The Simpsons, including Hank Scorpio in "You Only Move Twice" and Russ Cargill in The Simpsons Movie.
5.
Albert Brooks grew up among show business families in southern California, attending Beverly Hills High School with Richard Dreyfuss and Rob Reiner.
6.
Albert Brooks attended Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, but dropped out after one year to focus on his comedy career.
7.
Albert Brooks quickly became a regular on variety and talk shows during the late 1960s and early 1970s.
8.
Albert Brooks led a new generation of self-reflective baby-boomer comics appearing on NBC's The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson.
9.
Albert Brooks had already made his first short film, The Famous Comedians School, a satiric short and an early example of the mockumentary subgenre that was aired in 1972 on the PBS show The Great American Dream Machine.
10.
In 1975, Albert Brooks directed six short films for the first season of NBC's Saturday Night Live.
11.
In 1976, he appeared in his first mainstream film role, in Martin Scorsese's landmark Taxi Driver; Scorsese allowed Albert Brooks to improvise much of his dialogue.
12.
Albert Brooks had landed the role after moving to Los Angeles to enter the film business.
13.
Albert Brooks directed his first feature film, Real Life, in 1979.
14.
The film, in which Albert Brooks films a typical suburban family in an effort to win both an Oscar and a Nobel Prize, was a sendup of PBS's An American Family documentary.
15.
Albert Brooks made a cameo appearance in the film Private Benjamin, starring Goldie Hawn.
16.
Albert Brooks's best-received film, Lost in America, featured Brooks and Julie Hagerty as a couple who leave their yuppie lifestyle and drop out of society to live in a motor home as they have always dreamed of doing, meeting disappointment.
17.
Albert Brooks' Defending Your Life placed his lead character in the afterlife, put on trial to justify his human fears and determine his cosmic fate.
18.
Albert Brooks garnered positive reviews for Mother, which starred Brooks as a middle-aged writer moving back home to resolve tensions between himself and his mother.
19.
Albert Brooks is described as the best guest star in the show's history by IGN, particularly for his role as supervillain Hank Scorpio in the episode "You Only Move Twice".
20.
Albert Brooks acted in other writers' and directors' films during the 1980s and 1990s.
21.
Albert Brooks had a cameo in the opening scene of Twilight Zone: The Movie, playing a driver whose passenger has a shocking secret.
22.
Albert Brooks received positive reviews for his portrayal of a dying retail store owner who befriends a disillusioned teenager in My First Mister.
23.
Albert Brooks continued his voiceover work in Pixar's Finding Nemo, as the voice of Marlin, one of the film's protagonists.
24.
Albert Brooks has played Lenny Botwin, Nancy Botwin's estranged father-in-law, on Showtime's television series Weeds.
25.
In 2011, Albert Brooks co-starred as the vicious gangster Bernie Rose, the main antagonist in the film Drive, alongside Ryan Gosling and Carey Mulligan.
26.
Albert Brooks's performance received much critical praise and positive reviews, with several critics proclaiming Brooks' performance as one of the film's best aspects.
27.
In 2016, Albert Brooks voiced Tiberius, a curmudgeonly red-tailed hawk, in The Secret Life of Pets, and reprised the role of Marlin from Finding Nemo in the 2016 sequel Finding Dory.
28.
In 1997, Albert Brooks married artist Kimberly Shlain, daughter of surgeon and writer Leonard Shlain.